George Karl Calls Out DeMarcus Cousins for Comments on Kings

Former Kings coach George Karl took a shot at his former star player, DeMarcus Cousins, on Monday via Twitter after one of Cousins’s quotes from an interview started to make the rounds. When talking to Andscape’s Marc J. Spears, the 31-year-old said he wished he would have skipped his draft workout for Sacramento. Then he explained why. 

“What did Sac do for me? Besides say my name [draft day],” Cousins told Andscape. “I did more for them than they did for me. That’s just being honest. Just being 100% honest. I had two owners, three GMs, seven coaches in seven years. I was there seven years. I had three GMs, two owners and seven coaches. Not much more needs to be said.”

Karl saw this on Twitter and quote tweeted it with a message of his own. 

“Paid you approx $50M and gave you the opportunity to play professional basketball for a living,” he said in the tweet. 

Cousins is currently playing for the Nuggets after several different stops throughout his NBA career. He started his career with Sacramento in 2010, with Karl becoming his coach from 2015 to ’16. This is just the latest jab from Karl after the two had a well-documented rocky relationship. 

Karl was hired in February 2015 and looked for a deal to get Cousins traded that summer. Cousins proceeded to tweet a cryptic set of emojis that showed a snake in the grass. In 2020, Karl quote-tweeted a tweet asking people to name the player they disliked the most. He included a snake and called the center out by name. 

The two even got into a heated argument after a loss to the Spurs, and afterward Cousins publicly apologized for the incident. Karl was fired after the 2016 season.

Karl has not coached in the NBA since his firing from the Kings.